Why I Keep Studying the Holocaust

For the past forty years I have been obsessed by the Holocaust. It may be because my parents were survivors.  Maybe because I am Jewish.  Maybe because so many of my relatives were murdered over there.  Whatever it is, I teach the Holocaust in my classes.  I read what I can on the subject.  I have visited Auschwitz and Buchenwald.  I have been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D. C.  I am presently thinking of writing a book on the works of Elie Wiesel.
  

Why do I care so much about an event that is almost eighty years in our past?  Isn’t it enough?  What more can possibly be said or discovered?  Let it go.  But I cannot and will not.  Why?


Eighty years ago, in the heart of Europe something happened which revealed to us the light and the darkness of the human soul.  The Nazi revelation teaches us the capacities of the human being to commit evil and to be rationally convinced that doing so is right.  Yes, there have been other horrific events which could also function as a revelation but none so well documented and unprecedented as the Holocaust.


There is book entitled: The Nazi Conscience by Claudia Koonz.  She describes how Nazis woke up each day, went to their jobs, day after day after day, murdered Jews and others in massive numbers and were convinced they were right.  Their consciences were clear.  Many were lifelong Christians who did not see any contradiction between the mass killing and the Gospel of their faith.  For all their training in religious faith, their love of classical music, their education steeped in the liberal arts, none of it prevented the evil which occurred. Some of Hitler’s most prominent supporters were university professors in the Humanities and Natural Sciences not to mention prominent Christian pastors, theologians and philosophers. 
   

The Holocaust is a warning to us about what can happen.


As time goes by and the survivors continue to die, will the memory of the Holocaust also diminish, decline and fade away?  Today, the younger generations tell us they have not heard of it. 


So, I cannot and will not let go because I hope against hope if we keep studying, it may cumulatively have some effect.  Maybe, some of my students will eventually teach the Holocaust themselves.  Maybe a student who became a Pastor will remember, in his or her sermon, to caution the congregation to be aware of anti-Judaism in the New Testament.  Maybe some will teach their children to remember.  Maybe some will not forget. I hope so.


If I keep studying and teaching the Holocaust it is because I am puzzled and dismayed by the amazing power of fear in our brains.  That fear seems to resist taming by love, religion, the arts, the sciences, theology and philosophy, psychological therapy, and of course common sense.  There is something in our brains that resists taming the fear of the stranger.


To be honest, remembering and studying the Holocaust may not prevent other mass murders.  Since 1945 there have been many catastrophes, from the Cambodian Khmer Rouge murders to the Rwandan genocide and much more.  The killing has not stopped.  We feel helpless and it may be hopeless, but that is precisely why we must do what we can never to forget.  It is why I cannot stop studying the Holocaust.  The old Jewish saying is correct, “In memory lies redemption.”

Remembering My Father

My father, Bernard Haar emigrated to America in 1947.  Having survived the camps which were part of the Nazi madness, he never spoke about his experience.   He married my mother Pola whom he had met in a DP camp in Germany. In New York City, he worked long hours, six days a week, as a clothing operator in a sweat shop but he hated the work.  And he constantly exhorted and encouraged me saying, “Get an education so you won’t have to do this.”  He came home from work each day tired, worn out, falling asleep on the living room chair after supper.


He was Jewish but not very religious though he never ceased to exhort me not to forget I was Jewish.   He could be stern, and he had a temper, but he could also be kind and caring with a humorous twinkle in his eyes.  When I was ill, he had this most wonderfully concerned and caring look on his face.   But, when I had not behaved well during the day, he could, when he came home from work, and at my Mom’s instigation, go after me with his belt.  Such was parenting in those days.


Despite all that, many days I would go to the Moshulu train station on Jerome Avenue and wait for him to come home from work.  I loved him but did not know him and I am not sure he knew what to make of me.  I was rebellious and questioned his authority.  It was the 1960’s and I embraced that era and was embraced by it.  


 He liked to play pinochle on the weekends in the park with “the old men.”  On Friday and Saturday nights he was gone late into the night to play poker with other survivors from those days.
  

At home he and my Mom argued in Yiddish and Polish a lot, mostly about money, my Dad’s constant card playing and who knows what else?  They did not have much and lived from paycheck to paycheck.  They had come from Europe but had never really acclimated to the States.  All their lives they lived in one-bedroom apartments and slept on a hide-a-bed in the living room, so their kids could have a real bed in the lone bedroom.


My father and I did not talk much, but we played Stratego, Rummy, went swimming together, and walked to Crotona park to have a catch.  He would throw the Spalding ball high in the air and I would try to catch it.  What a grand memory!  One time we went to Yankee stadium, but he did not enjoy the experience.


After I joined the Air Force, he would write me many letters exhorting me not to forget I was Jewish.  When I was twenty-one and at the height of my adolescent wisdom, nothing my parents said could dissuade me from what I knew was right; I decided to become a Christian.   My Dad tried to talk me out of my great wisdom.  But I was stubborn, foolish and determined. Only with age did I discover how wrong I had been and how I had hurt my parents, especially my Dad unnecessarily.  I am sorry, Dad.


When my father was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in 1979, I went home to see him.  We talked and I confessed that I now realized my mistaken decisions.  We went for a long walk on a beautiful sunny Fall day in the Bronx, father and son just talking.  When it was time for me to leave, and as the taxi waited outside the apartment building on Gates Place, we hugged, I said, “I love you Dad”; we kissed on the lips and said good-by.   There is so much more I still wanted to say to him.  

Up until the day he died, my father had black hair.  He looked twenty years younger than he was.  But when I told him, “Dad, you look young.”  He would routinely answer, “Yes, but I feel old.”


I hope my own children realize the fragility of life.  I hope we will talk and say what we want and need to say.  Life is indeed short.  You’re here and then you’re not here.  Btw, I think my Dad did the best he could with what he had and what had happened to him. I forgave him his human flaws as he forgave me mine.  Here’s to Bernard Haar.  May his memory be for a blessing.  I miss him.

Life After Life

Having entered my seventh decade, I think about what it all means.  While the human brain is amazingly agile, it has problems with mortality.  I know intellectually that getting older and eventually dying is part of life.  But my brain is not at home with that reality.  Maybe I fear the process of deterioration, the thought of saying good-bye, and let’s be honest, disappearing is a strange phenomenon.  Intellectually I understand it but emotionally I fear it.


There is an old word used by theologians called prolepsis.  A future event holds us in its grip for good or for bad though it has not yet occurred.  Christians tell us of their hope that when we die, we shall be raised to live with God eternally.  Jews talk about the “olam haba”, the world to come, where we shall live with God and study texts in that realm.  And Muslims also trust in a life after life where the way we have lived our lives will be examined.  So, why are these words not comforting?
  

Because I am not sure I believe it.  Is there really something else going on?  I hope so but I am not sure.  Some of you have more certainty or stronger trust than I do.


But, here’s the deal. Every night I lay down, let go, and disappear for about eight hours and the world seems to get along quite well without me.  When I go on sabbatical from the university, they keep right on teaching Religion without me.  And if or when I become seriously ill, how would that be different from what happens to everybody else? The fact is, we are engaged in “perpetual loss” and we are compelled to figure out how to keep going day after day.


This fear of getting sick and dying is sobering and real.  We all feel it.   But I do not intend to let it control me.  We are here to live our lives as well as possible.  I say to you and myself, be honest, express your fears and doubts but don’t let them run your life.  Live your life as well and full as you can and, life after life will take care of itself.

Speaking in Chapel

This past week, I spoke in chapel.  As usual, it was a nerve-wracking experience.  Why?  First, I am a Jew and a former Christian speaking in a Christian Lutheran chapel under the shadow of the cross.  I have about 8-10 minutes to say something worthwhile.  And, I feel like the insider/outsider stranger speaking. 


I spoke about faith being a problematic and unsure endeavor.  Faith means trusting in an invisible mysterious unpredictable being with an inconsistent record.  It means trusting without knowing for sure, with the distinct possibility of being wrong.  As much as I believe there is something going on, that there is meaning and a God behind all that is happening, I could just as easily be deluded. 


After the Holocaust, how God is present in the world is problematic and we ought to be honest about it.  Acting like nothing has happened and we can just turn the page and go on doing what was always done is problematic, a betrayal of the victims, and terribly unjust.
  

So, chapel is a troubled and anxious space for me.  But I appreciate the honor of being asked, and the willingness of students and faculty to listen. 


As always, I bolted out the side door right after the service, because I feel like an intruder into somebody else’s faith tradition and need to exit quickly.


So, why do it? Why speak in chapel if it produces so much anxiety?  Because after all that has happened between Jews and Christians, between me and the Christian Church, after the Holocaust, it is important to have one Jew, maybe the only one ever in this place, to speak up with all due respect, and say again the ever important Jewish no and yes.

Why Antisemitism?

Why does it go on from day to day, month to month, year to year, and generation to generation?  Jews are assaulted or killed, a synagogue or temple is attacked by a gunman, all sadly unsurprising.   Why?


The answer is not so hard; the remedy is more problematic. The answer is fear through ignorance, undergirded by obsessive hatred and conspiratorial thinking, exploding with violence by readily available weapons.


The remedy is not so easy to come by.  We have tried and are trying education, cultural pressure, emphasis on love being more powerful than hate, religious interfaith dialogues, Holocaust studies, and a myriad of other attempts to stop the killing.  While there has been some success, the hatred and murder go on.  Again, Why???


Because in our brains, fear and hate are more powerful than all the attempts to stop it.  Whether you or I like it or not, some people continue to believe there are a group of Jews sitting somewhere, meeting and plotting to control the world.  It’s a belief, a faith, a trust they think is true despite anything else being reported.  And in an era of “fake news”, some are skeptical of anything reported or taught. 


Antisemitism is indeed “the longest hatred.”  Despite the fact the killings go on, we must do all we can to teach, to preach, and to educate.  There may not be much hope of completely stopping the fear and hatred.  We may feel helpless.   But that is precisely why we must do whatever we can.
  

I will keep teaching, you do what you can where you are; speak out, refuse to keep silent.  The potential for evil in our hearts and brains may not be eradicable, but we must struggle to keep it at bay. Human beings have the capacity for evil, but they also have the capacity for good.  Do what you can where you live.